The first of these released was Parkway Drive: The DVD. The film starts with individual members of the band and close friends being interviewed from their hometown of Byron Bay, Australia. The first hour and a half of the film follow in this vein, using old footage and pictures to go with what the person being interviewed was saying of the band's history. For this band, this was a very effective method of capturing the band's early history as they had a very grassroots beginning, often sleeping outside during their first tours. The documentary section of this film will leave viewers inspired by their beginnings. After the documentary section ends, a full video of a recent hometown show plays, without cutting in between songs, showing both the songs, in order, and the chatter in between songs. This gives the film a more realistic feel, allowing the viewer to become immersed in the set as if they were there themselves.
The next film I watched was Silverstein's commemorative ten year anniversary DVD, Decade: Live at the El Mocambo. This was filmed over 4 days: each day, the band played one of their then four released albums in its entirety, and did interviews about that time in the band's history before and after the show. This film takes the opposite approach as Parkway Drive's film in that it starts with a song being performed, then cuts to a short interview, then plays another song or two (skipping over some in the set), and flips to another interview. This is effective in putting the commemorative feel on the film as they are able to focus on more specific aspects of the bands history. Specifically, they discuss the history behind each specific album, then flip to the band playing songs from that album so that viewers can listen to the song being performed with the history behind it fresh in mind, giving the performance a more sentimental feel.
The next film I watched was No Room For Rockstars: the Vans Warped Tour Documentary. While it doesn't focus on a specific artist like the other two I watched, the film follows 4 selected artists that performed on the Vans Warped Tour in 2010. Warped Tour is a music festival that travels the country every summer. Played at outdoor venues, there will be 6 or 7 stages set up at every event, with over 100 bands on the tour. Founded in 1995 by Kevin Lyman, it is the longest consecutive running music festival in the world. Originally it focused on punk-rock groups and gave several bands, including Sublime, Blink-182, and Pennywise, their initial chance at fame in 1995. Now, there is a wide variety of music displayed, primarily metalcore (a fusion genre between heavy metal and hardcore punk) and pop-punk bands, although many rappers, pop artists, folk artists, and many more follow the tour each year. The film follows 4 artists that played Warped Tour that year in their day to day lives on the tour, making the film more a 'day-in-the-life' type of documentary as opposed to going through the tour's history, which is minimal. It also makes a point of capturing the tour's diverse line-up by following folk-pop artist Christopher Drew, pop singer Mike Posner, the (late) deathcore vocalist, Mitch Lucker, and finally the up and coming pop-punk group, Forever Came Calling, who were following the tour in their van in order to sell CDs and get their name out there. The film emphasizes Warped Tour's rich culture and history and mostly follows artists and crews on their day to day activities, and occasionally has an interview. Short clips of performances are shown to give examples of the band, but there is no actual live music section of the film.
The cinematography of each film varied according to its purpose as well. For Parkway Drives, purely factual, interview section of the film, anyone - or no one for that matter - could have been behind the stationary camera. Silverstein on the other hand used the director of several of their more high budget music videos to film and produce their film, resulting in a more technical approach. Some of the interviews were filmed in black and white, while performances were in color. The interviews would have multiple camera angles, often starting off out of focus and clearing up a few seconds in. The Warped Tour documentary featured a combination of both, having plenty of stationary interviews as well as traveling documenting.
Overall, each documentary had a different method of explaining the band or tour. The real difference was not always in content, but the way they organized it. They all featured artist interviews, documentary footage, and live videos, but they organized it differently, some relying on others more. Overall,I think the way they chose to use each of those types of footage depended on what the ultimate goal of the DVD was: for Silverstein it was to commemorate everything they've done over the past 10 years, so there was a lot of individual emphasis on each song, cutting to interviews in between each one. For Parkway Drive, it was to explain their history and show you their power live, so those to sections were kept distinctly separate. Finally, for the Warped Tour documentary, the purpose was more to show you what goes into each Warped Tour and what life on the tour is like, as opposed to explaining the history and showing live footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1WWJhQGbE a live song clip from Parkway Drive's DVD
Good work here, Steve. This was interesting and thorough. It would be nice to have some connections to films or techniques we referenced in class, but I like your analysis. Focusing on the purpose was a good idea too.
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